This is Motty from Beitar. My friend Reb Pinchas told me a story that happened to him over the course of an entire year:
In the month of Av 5782, Hakadosh Baruch Hu blessed us with twins. Two healthy sweet babies entered our home, and with them the whole seder of the day changed. Materna, bottles, cribs, diapers...two babies each demand their own; day and night, they don’t rest. My wife, shetichyeh, went on maternity leave for three and a half months and devoted herself to caring for the twins. Once we saw that the date of her return to work was approaching, we recalculated: We had been zocheh to incredible brachos from Shamayim, and we wanted to give the babies the best possible care, simultaneously safeguarding the kochos of their mother. How would she go out to work if, during the few hours that are available to her in a day, she has to make up her missing sleep? If she had a bit more time, there were a thousand and one urgent things to be done in the house, and of course, she also had to give attention to the older children, who were not much older than the twins.
Together we came to the conclusion that my wife’s place was at home. This year she would not be returning to work. She would fulfill her job as a mother in Am Yisrael, and next year, b’ezras Hashem, when the babies would be older, she would go back to work.
This was our plan, which was accompanied by two significant questions: a) From where would there be money? From where would we get a salary of a few thousand shekels each month? b) Would my wife’s boss agree to accept her back to work after a year’s leave?
I did not have answers, but we placed our bitachon in Hashem, Who would fulfill the words of our Sages – He Who gave life would also give sustenance.
The year 5783 passed. Each and every day of that year we had what we needed. At the end of the year I made an accounting. I am a melamed in a cheder, and my salary remained what it had always been, except for one change: With the start of the school year, before Rosh Hashanah, a father of one of the boys in my class phoned me. This was a pleasant, easy-going boy whom I am happy to be able to teach. His father told me he was very happy with my work. The boy came home happy each day, and my investment in him was obvious, so he wanted to give me a gift.
“Thanks,” I said, thinking that the following day the boy would show up with a jar of honey and perhaps also a chocolate shaped like an apple. “So if you could, please give me the details of your bank account,” the father continued, and I gave him that information.
Two days later I was surprised to discover that 8,000 shekels had been transferred into my account! The “modest gift” of the grateful father.
This was not a one-time occurrence. That same fine parent continued with his generosity and, from time to time, transferred a ”few shekalim” – with three zeros – into my account; once just before Tu BiShevat, once in honor of Purim, once in honor of Pesach, and also as a gift at the end of the year. When I tried to say something and apologize that I hadn’t intended to receive so much, he said, “It’s okay. You do your work. You deserve it.”
I sat and made an accounting at the end of the year of the sum total of bonuses I had received in 5783, and amazingly enough, the total sum came to the exact amount of money that my wife would have made if she had gone back to work immediately at the end of her maternity leave, until the end of the year. Exactly, shekel per shekel; no more and no less!
For “dessert,” I’ll relate that toward the beginning of this year, 5784, they called my wife from work and told her they were waiting for her return.
This is my friend Pinchas’s story, and it is a mitzvah to publicize it, so that people know that to raise doros yesharim is a great zechus, and that when Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives, He gives generously! He gives both strength and money. We need only believe and have faith.
